War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

hundred years before, it had meant tanks. While tanks still existed, there were just some places they couldn’t go.

‘Feeling more confident?’ she subvocalised over a private link to the Cyclops but her dad didn’t answer. Miska looked around at the legionnaires in the belly of the Pegasus with her. She wasn’t sure when it had happened but, despite the horror stories that had come back from the Faigroe Station and Barnard’s Prime jobs, many of them had stopped giving her the surly, insolent looks. Some of them were actively embracing the life of a mercenary in a penal legion, and the limited rewards that offered.

She wasn’t sure when or how the change had come about. It could have been the influence of the senior criminals, like the Mafia consigliere Uncle Vido, supporting her and taking officer’s ranks in the legion. Or perhaps they had just decided that it was more interesting than being held in suspended animation. Plus they got to steal things and shoot at other people. Every so often Miska reflected that she was perhaps a bad influence on all these thieves and murderers. That said, she had the most enthusiastic, and therefore the best paid, legionnaires with her on this job. Even so, she still caught the odd resentful glance out of the corner of her eye. Like the one Torricone was giving her right now. She thought about opening up a direct comms link and demanding to know what his problem was this time. You’ve got far more important things to concentrate on, she chided herself. Torricone had been a pain in the ass since they had returned from their disastrous mission to Barney’s Prime. That, however, wasn’t what bothered Miska. What bothered her was why she cared, one way or another. Sure, he was pretty, but so what? Not as pretty as the Ultra.

‘Pegasus-One to all call signs, I’m cutting the canopy now.’ McWilliams’s voice over the comms net shook Miska out of her somewhat guilty reverie.

Fucking concentrate! she told herself. From the external lens feed she watched as the assault shuttle fired its point defence lasers up at the canopy, using them as energy-inefficient cutting torches, further reddening the jungle darkness. Miska’s stomach lurched as McWilliams jinked the assault shuttle, sluggish from all the weight it was carrying, out of the way of the falling greenery. She heard someone further forward in the cargo bay retch, an angry voice admonishing them.

Miska enlarged the feed from the spotter drone in her IVD. It took off from its cradle and flew through the smouldering hole that had been cut in the foliage. Above the jungle canopy, the distant star of Epsilon Eridani was just starting to brighten the horizon, though the gas giant, Epsilon Eridani B, remained large in the sky above them. The drone stayed low over the canopy, its reactive camouflage rendering it all but invisible. The drone’s-eye view of the jungle top made it look like a vast green plain, broken only by distant hills and beyond them the imaginatively named Northern Mountains. Without satellite coverage and with the sensor range limited above and below the canopy, a spotter drone was their best bet of finding incoming aircraft.

‘Pegasus-One to all call signs, two fast-movers inbound from the east,’ McWilliams intoned over comms. Miska could just about make out the fast-movers in the spotter drone’s long distance lens feed. They were burning hard, skimming over the tree tops at what looked like mere inches above the canopy. They had the smooth lines of sleek violence that Miska had come to associate with Martian Military Industries weapon systems. She was pretty sure they were Siren multi-role atmosphere fighters.

‘Pegasus-Two to all call signs,’ Perez added over comms. ‘Passives are picking up heat behind us. I’d guess one, possibly more assault shuttles coming in fast and angry.’

That made sense. Leave someone to secure the base and then come after them.

‘Shit,’ Miska muttered out loud. Some of the nearby legionnaires turned to look at her, as did the head of the war droid that the copy of her dad’s electronic spirit was wearing.

‘Going to get expensive,’ her dad said. Miska nodded. It was inevitable. They had attacked Triple S (conventional), a subsidiary that, as their name implied, handled the conventional part of the war on Ephesus. The QRF was most likely Triple S (elite), recruited from special forces veterans. Miska and her Bastards had encountered them before. Triple S had their faults but their elite subsidiary had their shit together.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to Pegasus-One, missile mine the fast-movers,’ Miska said over the comms link.

‘How many?’ McWilliams asked.

‘All of them,’ she told him.

It was odd hearing a war droid groan.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to Pegasus-Two, you’re cleared weapons hot as well.’

There was a dry chuckle from Perez over the comms link. There was no two ways about it, missile combat was expensive, and thanks to the efficiency of modern point defence systems, often ineffective. That said, it was devastating when it worked and they had stolen much more material than the mission was going to cost.

Assuming we don’t get shot out of the sky.

The Pegasi assault shuttles were designed to survive putting troops down in hot LZs, and then providing a degree of close air support if need be. But they weren’t dogfighters, particularly when they were this heavily laden.

‘All call signs abort, abort, abort. I need the Harpies to come in and pick up the mechs,’ Miska said over an open frequency, hoping that Triple S would think that the Bastards had sloppy comms discipline.

And if they buy poor comms, hopefully they’ll take the bait and won’t think to look for the drone. She was starting to think her dad was right. This plan had too many moving parts. She was feeling trapped in the press of bodies. Helpless. She didn’t like the way that her life was in the hands of the shuttle pilots now.

She felt the shuttle shift around her. Checked the lens feed. Watched as Pegasus 1 manoeuvred under the